The entertainment industry is a large, and growing, area of commerce. Significant levels of revenue are generated as a result of demand by consumers for entertainment. Business entities associated with the entertainment industry sometimes are of national, or even international, scope and presence. Various business entities are associated with different segments of the entertainment industry, including, e.g., the creation, performance, recordation, and distribution of musical, as well as other entertainment, content. And, long-established, and well-entrenched, commercial channels are in place that extend between the creators and the consumers of the content.
While the existing channels provide for the delivery of the content to the content consumers, technological advancements in communication and processing technologies that have become available have not fully been implemented. Their implementation would increase the efficiencies of the distribution, both in timeliness and quality, as well as in other manners. And, to the extent that technological advancements have been implemented, their implementation has not been made in integrated manners, but, rather, have been limited to discrete aspects or portions of the commercial channels.
Advancements in digital, and other, communication technologies, for instance, have permitted the development and deployment of new types of communication systems that provide new manners by which to distribute the musical and other entertainment content. Most generally, a communication system provides for the communication of data between a set of communication stations. A content consumer, positioned in proximity to a communication station to which the content is deliverable, is provided with the content pursuant to operation of the communication system. The communication station at which the content is originated is referred to as the content source, and the communication station at which the content is delivered is referred to as the content destination. The content is communicated by way of a communication channel to the content destination and provided to the content consumer in human perceptible form. Various types of communication systems are used to provide the content to the consumer. Wireline communication systems, for instance, are available for use through which to deliver the content to a content consumer. In a wireline communication system, the communication channels upon which the content is communicated are defined upon wireline connections that extend between the content source and the content destination. And, in radio communication systems, the communication channels upon which the content is communicated are defined upon radio channels, formed upon portions of the electromagnetic spectrum. Both wireline communication systems and radio communication systems are sometimes together used to deliver content to a content consumer. That is to say, sometimes a portion of a communication path extending between the content source and the content destination is formed of a radio communication system.
Communications by way of a conventional telephonic system and by way of the Internet backbone are exemplary of wireline communication systems. And, satellite-based radio, television, and other broadcast, systems are also exemplary of radio communication systems that are used to communicate content. Content is deliverable to content consumers in a stream of successive content files forming a content stream by any of these communication systems. The content streams are broadcast to, or otherwise distributed to, the consumers.
While content, formed into a content stream, is deliverable to a content consumer by way of any of various different types of communication systems, including communication systems that take advantage of advancements in communication and processing technologies, existing schemes by which to select content that is broadcast to a content consumer fails fully to take advantage of advancements in communication technologies.
Selection is made, for instance, based upon pre-ordained “play lists”, selected days, weeks, or even months prior to the broadcast of the content. Due to the time lag between the creation of the play list and the broadcast of the content, the content that is broadcast is not necessarily, and oftentimes is not, the content most-demanded by the content consumers. If a better manner could be provided by which to select which content is to be broadcast to content consumers by a selected communication system forming a distribution mechanism, the broadcast content could better be that which is desired by the content consumers.
It is in light of this background information related to the distribution of recorded content that the significant improvements of the present invention have evolved.